Become, When You Love Them
by fairbreeze
Summary: Love is terrifying to watch, from the outside. So are your intestines. (or, Carlos is changed by Night Vale, and his team of scientists are horrified) Spoilers for episode 31 "A Blinking Light up on the Mountain" (Carlos/Cecil)


A/N: I'm trying out posting a couple of my stories here. I have a lot more over on AO3, including my more explicit work, but I wanted to try out this site again, since it's been awhile since I posted here. :)

Spoilers for "A Blinking Light up on the Mountain" and potentially every episode before it.

* * *

The town _loves_ him, and Cecil is a part of the town.

Or maybe it's Cecil that loves him, and so the town follows suit. He's never actually been able to tell the difference, and that's something that would have terrified him a year and some change ago, but now, seems normal. It's normal, now, that the same people who would stop Cecil on the street to talk about anything and everything now talk to him the same way, as though he's one of them, as though he's _special_.

And he, in turn, slowly falls in love with the town. Or maybe with Cecil. Or maybe it doesn't matter anymore. He's still not entirely sure he had a _choice_ in the matter, if questioned on it, (he has never forgotten what happened with Telly) but it's not something he spends a lot of time thinking about, anymore. It's… flattering, actually. He's got enough self-esteem to get by, but lacks enough of it that having a _whole town_ love him is something that's a special kind of _exciting_, rather than terrifying.

He never stops using pens. He's entirely too practical for that. They have a government dispensation, his team of scientists and him, that basically says that the rules don't apply to them. But he stops eating wheat and wheat by-products. He stays out of the street on major holidays. He puts red dots on the things he loves, and blue dots on the things he doesn't (there were more blue than red dots, at first, but now he keeps running out of the red ones and having to get more from the Secret Police) But he wouldn't say that _he's_ changed, not really. He's still Carlos the Scientist, even if he's also become Perfect Carlos with the Caramel Voice and then Perfectly Imperfect Carlos Who Chews Too Loud, and then, eventually just _Carlos_, said breathless with love and lust and out of a mouth and throat that had to struggle to form syllables in human languages, even Modified Sumerian. But, through it all, he is still himself, isn't he?

The change is easier to see from the outside. First, he loses weight in stress and running for his life and too many sleepless nights in the lab frantically trying to make everything make_sense_. Then, he starts to see a strange beauty in it all, a symmetry in the lack of sense. He takes a weekend trip to New York to visit some friends from grad school and he hates being away, ends up being bad dinner conversation when he has nothing _normal_, anymore, to talk about. When he comes back, he starts to lose weight in the way you only lose weight when you haven't been taking care of yourself at all, and start to. He nearly dies in an underground city made up of tiny, miniature people. He kisses a man who's mouth looks wholly normal, but contains nothing _human_ behind it's lips. He keeps kissing him. He saves the town With Science. He gains weight in the way you only do when you have started taking care of yourself and are now remembering to eat, and sleep, and take days off and your boyfriend is a surprisingly fabulous cook.

Oh, and he gets a boyfriend.

He gets a boyfriend who creeps literally every last one of the other scientists out. He gets a boyfriend who makes all the meters in the lab ratchet up to 11 when he comes in the building, even when the dials don't even _go_ to 11, and who's shadows move, _undulate_, when they think no one is watching. At first, they tease him about it, good-naturedly. But then there's a bite too high on his neck for his collar to hide, and they are _scientists_\- they know it's too big to have come from a human. But Carlos has the relaxed posture and easy smile of the _fucked boneless_ and so they say nothing, but they exchange glances when he's not looking, tight and worried.

It all comes to a head the night the army invades Night Vale.

Carlos still doesn't take a _lot_ of time off, because he might be going native, but he is still a scientist, but he has taken tonight off to make dinner for Cecil, for a change, since he's been seeing less of him. There's always something in the lab to keep him away, each project of his team seems to break or need his expertise in turn and he doesn't even realize it's been_weeks_ since he's seen Cecil until Cecil himself finally points it out to him, and he takes a day off, much to the chagrin of his scheming team. And that's when it happens.

A few of the other scientists rush upstairs to his little apartment above the labspace, screaming about there being some kind of big red light up on a mountain, and a floodplain and an_army_, and hasn't he been listening to the _radio_? He has been, of course, he always listens when Cecil is on, but he's just been letting his voice drift over him while he cooks. For just a moment, Carlos hits a point of absolute irritation with everything. He does so much, he works _so hard_ and the one night he's trying to have a nice, science-free date with his boyfriend, some stupid army has to come and fuck it all up.

"It's just a mirage," he says, with all of the denial he can muster, "Just a mirage. Pretty good one. Nothing to worry about." And he goes back to his dinner. If the army comes, they can damn well come after he has finished. He hears the muttering of the other scientists, when he turns away and he thinks it's because he's rebuffed them. But that isn't it at all.

They are muttering about how, for a moment, they all clearly saw his eyes glow brilliantly purple, and how it might be time to _leave_.

The person who is the most surprised that almost the entire thing _was_ a mirage, is _Carlos_, but the astonishment is quickly forgotten in dinner and a bottle of wine shared on the sofa, and needing, rather suddenly, to purchase a new sofa.

When they drug him and handcuff him to the inside of the car, he tries to warn them. They're misguided, not bad people, and he doesn't blame them, even as he fights at them, weakly, limbs turned sluggish and thoughts hazy. He tries to tell them he can't leave, tries to tell them he's covered all the mirrors for a reason, tries to make them understand that this is _dangerous_, what they are doing, but his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth.

Night Vale comes for him, about a mile out of town.

It looks a lot like Cecil, but even the woman driving the car (Annette? Harriet? He knows her name, but his brain won't supply it) knows that it's just something wearing Cecil's skin, shadows oozing out of it's eyes, the vastness of space inside, the twinkling of stars. One of it's tentacles punches a hole straight into the engine of the car, and Carlos is remarkably calm as they skid and _roll_.

He can taste his own blood in his mouth, and he's just going to bet his ribs and his wrist inside the handcuff are both broken in at least one place. He can _feel_ Night Vale's anger, bearing down on them. On _him_\- and he's actually glad of the drugs, because they make everything seem far away. Tentacles wind around him, too tight, painful, and he thinks _hey, babe_, muzzily, and dimly wonders if he's about to die because his friends tried to save him, and the town doesn't understand. But then one of the tentacles winds around the handcuff, and there's an inhuman screech.

He's pretty sure the others are dead. He's pretty sure the car exploded. He's pretty sure he was still in it, when it did. He's also, in direct defiance of the other things he's pretty sure of, pretty sure he's alive—injured, but alive. There's something dark and cool pouring down his throat and it tastes like moonlight and rotting things and eternity, and it's so_comforting_ that he lets himself go.

He's safe now. He can trust that it will bring him home.

(He starts a list of the junior scientists, the way Cecil keeps track of his interns. They say you become like the one you love.

Carlos is alright with that.)


End file.
